Lesser-known history unveiled at Ankara’s Flying Broom festival

Two documentaries featured in the newly introduced “Öteki Tarih” (The Other History) program of this year’s Uçan Süpürge (Flying Broom) International Women’s Film Festival will today have their Ankara premieres in back-to-back gala screenings at the Kızılırmak Theater.“İki Tutam Saç -- Dersim’in Kayıp Kızları” (Two Locks of Hair: The Lost Girls of Dersim), a 2010 documentary that recounts the stories of little girls who lost their parents and were adopted by families of high-ranking Turkish army officers during the state’s intervention against the Dersim revolt in Tunceli led by Kurdish clans in the late 1930s, is the first film in today’s gala screening program, which will start at 7 p.m. The film’s director, Nezahat Gündoğan, will be in attendance and will take part in a panel discussion with festival-goers following the gala.

The second film in today’s gala, Berke Baş’s 2009 documentary “Nahide’nin Türküsü” (Nahide’s Song), will be shown following “The Lost Girls of Dersim.” The first-person feature documentary, through the story of the director’s own grandmother, explores the lesser-known and generally untold history of the Black Sea city of Ordu and its Armenian inhabitants.

The Other History program focuses on “identities that have been subjected to ‘evil’ by being deliberately alienated and ignored,” the festival’s organizers say. The Flying Broom film festival is marking its 13th edition through May 13 in the Turkish capital, offering around 100 films by women directors from 28 countries under this year’s main theme, “evil.”